“Tree!”
The pounding impact as they crashed was so loud, his ears stung, so violent, that pain consumed him even through the haze of the drug, everything taking him back to the moment when he had made the decision to give someone else’s true love a chance.
And purposely detonated his own restraint collar.
Finally, he thought as his energy ebbed. He could be reunited with Cordelhia in the Fade.
When he felt no relief at the prospect, no happiness, either, he told himself it was because of his suffering.
It had nothing to do with the nurse that had been left behind, the one who had cared for him with such tenderness and concern, the one who, when Apex had not been by his side, had sat with him as if where his destiny went so did hers…
The one whose eyes he had never looked into, and face he had never seen, whose halting movements told a story she had never put into words—and didn’t need to for him to understand.
No, his numbness had nothing to do with Nadya.
At all.
One grenade.
It turned out Apex found one grenade in the SUV they stole.
What fucking luck.
As they sped away from the prison camp’s new location, and bullets shattered both the rear and side windows, he dove for cover into the back seat’s wheel well, the fragments of safety glass speckling him like sleet. As a second barrage of bullets pinged off the exterior of the vehicle, he thought of all the fuel in the gas tank, and though his eyes had closed instinctively, he popped them open again pretty damn fast—
The small, fist-sized metal object rolled right into his face, and the palm-contoured, square-ridged little fucker fit just perfectly into his left eye socket. Ever the aggressor, he was ready to punch back when he realized—
Jerking his head toward it, he snatched the thing quick as his next breath. Which was what you did when you won a munitions lottery you weren’t aware of having entered.
Perfect timing. Whoever was trying to pump the SUV full of bullets was reloading so there was a pause in the barrage.
Apex pulled the pin while he surged up from the floor. The roaring sound from the open hole where the passenger-side window had been led him better than sight would have, and he moved instinctively. Shoving his torso out of the bullet-created aperture, a blast of wind hit his back as he trained his focus on the tall, boxy vehicle about thirty feet in their wake.
Thanks to its interior lighting, he identified two guards, one behind the wheel looking out over the hood like his eyes were the laser sights of a bazooka, and the other in the passenger seat with his attention trained on his lap.
No time to get in his head about aim. Besides, he had the grenade in the wrong hand, so this was going to be a shit throw.
Shifting his weight, he got even farther out of the window, his dagger hand gripping a handle mounted on the ceiling to hold his body at a bad angle. Good news: The grenade didn’t weigh much, and he had the wind working for him. The metal knot ofkaboom!flew through the air, but the arc was off. Instead of going through the front windshield, it hit the grille—
Nope, bounce was okay. As opposed to going under the vehicle, velocity took the explosive up onto the hood, then up onto that windshield.
Now, goddamn it,now—
Nope, bounce was bad. The grenade rode up the slope of that windshield and disappeared as it hit the roof. Where it was going to blow up thin air in their pursuers’ wake.
“Fuck!” Apex sucked back into the car. “Faster, we need to go fa—”
The explosion was loud enough so that the sound cut through the blaring wind and the engine roar, and the burst of light was like the sun that Apex remembered from before his transition. Wrenching around in his seat, he saw the brilliant yellow light contained inside the guards’ vehicle, the glare beaming out of the glass on all sides and silhouetting the driver and the passenger for a moment.
Before they became just another part of a fruit salad of shrapnel—
“We’re going off-road!” Mayhem hollered.
Their vehicle veered over the shoulder and caught something, their velocity undiminished as they enjoyed a brief moment of flight. Then the landing punched Apex up into the roof of the SUV, his head taking the brunt of the impact—meanwhile, Kane was like loose luggage, banging around the place as they landed on three tires, nearly fell off-balance, but somehow kept going.
With a sudden surge, Apex pushed himself over to the male, yanked the seat belt across him, and roughly shoved the clip into its home.
“Tree!” Mayhem shouted.